The present invention relates generally to a message processing system and method and more particularly to a rapid development method and system for a message processing application.
Today, communication network elements communicate according to predetermined application interfaces. For example, today's Advanced Intelligent telephone Network ("AIN") has network elements which support several applications including an AIN Release 0 service control point ("SCP") application and an AIN Release 0.1 SCP application. As new interfaces are added to the telephone network, so are service-related applications. Interfaces comprise a set of messages which must be processed by the service related applications. This specification also refers to the interfaces as message sets. For example, personal communication services ("PCS") and customer contact services ("CCS") in the AIN are new applications which have been designed and supported using IS41 and 1129+ message sets. To do so, however, telephone network elements, such as SCPs, must be upgraded to support IS41 and 1129+ message sets in addition to AIN Release 0 and/or AIN Release 0.1 message sets. Network elements may also support generic interfaces such as the Generic Data Interface ("GDI") message set. Moreover, as new applications are created, new message sets must also be supported.
Today's AIN Release 0 and other telephone network applications are supported by a Multi Services Application Protocol ("MSAP") and SPACE-based call processing records ("CPR") for each user. As explained in the related patent applications, in the AIN, telephone switches respond to calls from a caller by sending triggers requesting call processing information to a SCP running MSAP and SPACE-based CPRs. MSAP executes the SPACE-based CPRs corresponding to certain trigger information to provide call processing instructions back to the switch.
Each time a new interface, such as a new cellular network interface, is added to the telephone network, MSAP must be extended to support that new interface. This has several drawbacks. In particular, since MSAP is a huge application, hundreds of thousands of lines of code must be reevaluated, rewritten, developed, tested, and compiled, before being set up in the network. Developers must not only test the new code, but must test the old code, as well, to ensure that the old capability continues to exist and the new capability works as required. Moreover, since the MSAP platform is distributed across many SCPs in the network, to deploy the rewritten MSAP, software fixes must be applied at each SCP site, all of which takes a great deal of time.
Thus, in today's telephone network, the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of new interfaces are time-consuming and expensive. The same holds true for expanding interfaces in other domains, such as operations systems and network engineering systems.
It is therefore desirable to provide a message processing system that substantially obviates one or more of the problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
It is also desirable to provide a message processing system that can be rapidly designed, developed, tested, deployed, and maintained.
It is further desirable to provide a flexible message processing system and method which can be efficiently and rapidly expanded to support new applications and interfaces.
Additional objectives, features, and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the written description and appended claims hereof, as well as the appended drawings.